Tag Archives: Africa

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, imprisoned woman leader of the Rwandan political party of the opposition FDU-Inkingi. On December 13th, 2013 she was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment. Her crime: having in 2010 attempted to challenge democratically through elections the Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame.

Five years have just passed. It was on October 14th, 2010 when she was first sentenced. Her flame of real peace and reconciliation among Rwandans demands being kept alive.

On January 09th, 2010 I was in Brussels at the farewell event that gathered more than 300 people to see Victoire Ingabire going back to Rwanda. A week later she landed in Kigali.

There are things we do in our everyday lives that we don’t think about while we’re doing them. For me, it’s writing. When I write I don’t question where writing came from, when I first got involved, or particularly how we started learning about the basics of the alphabet. Continue reading →

The original title of the author’s article is :“Egypt is calling the West’s bluff over its phony war on ISIS.”

Sarkozy and Kaddafi

This is the state of affairs NATO bequeathed to Libya, reversing the country’s trajectory as a stable, prosperous pan-African state that was a leading player in the African Union and a thorn in the side of US and British attempts to re-establish military domination.

Western states are trumpeting ISIS as the latest threat to civilisation, claiming total commitment to their defeat, and using the group’s conquests in Syria and Iraq as a pretext for deepening their own military involvement in the Middle East. Continue reading →

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A form of robbery by the powerful through deprivation of rights on properties belonging to indigenous people or their ancestors, land grabbing in Africa took enormous and decisive rip with colonization and significant role of the new African elites which, after the period of independence, came to preside over the destiny of their respective countries on the continent.

In countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, etc land grabbing has almost transformed negatively and irreversibly the lives of millions of Africans who have become destitute in many places. Being a continental problem, it has manifested itself – and continues to be – differently according to local and past history, but also because of involved interests.

Amma Fosuah Poku, an African human rights activist based in London, describes in the following paragraphs the case of the Lang’ata Primary School in Nairobi Kenya.

In Kenya pupils and parents are resisting land grabbing of school land. On 19th January 2015 pupils and parents of Lang’ata primary school protested about the land grabbing of their school land. The response of the state was to send in armed police who tear gassed the people protesting.

Ten days later on 29th January 2015 parents of children who attend St. Catherine primary school took their 20 year land grab protest to the government cabinet secretary for land, housing and urban development who assured them the land would be returned to the school.

Of course land grabbing is not a new phenomenon, 26th February 2015 marks 130 years since the end of the Berlin conference, the biggest land grab in the history of humankind, the colonisation of Africa.

As African people resisted colonial land grabbing, all present day attempts to grab land which rightfully belongs to the people (whether by an African elite class, super rich foreigners, multinational companies or foreign countries) must be resisted.

We must always remember that, despite the challenges, there is power in people uniting to pursue freedom, fairness and justice.

Below, the first of two video reports which I’m sharing courtesy of Chukwunyere Kamalu (posted the video link below in Stop FIIA Facebook group) shows the police response to pupils and parents protesting at Lang’ata primary school. Irungu Houghton, who is know to some of us, can be seen being manhandled by the police towards the end of the clip:

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Picture by Amma Fosuah Poku – London protest held on 25/01/15 against Boko Haram’s atrocities in Nigeria.

Some years ago I remember reading in one edition of The Economist how different countries valued the lives of their citizens. Japan topped the ranking. Africa as a whole was at the bottom of the index that the newspaper had put together.

There is ample evidence of different worths of lives around the world if one looks at how mainstream media report and by so doing influence how they are dealt with anywhere or simply generally perceived. Continue reading →